He
was not himself a mystic, but a sensitive youth whom the world's rubs had
taught the uses of a thick hide. Either you have that by nature, or you
earn it by practice. Glyde had found out that the less you say to your
maltreaters the less, in time, you have to say about it to yourself. He
was conscious of his parts and all too ready to be arrogant. Senhouse's
goddess had been kind to him, and he had presumed upon that. Senhouse's
own method was to alternate extreme friendliness with torrential contempt.
He knocked Glyde down and picked him up again with the same hand. He
treated him as his equal whenever he was not considering him a worm. There
is no better way of gaining the confidence of a youth of his sort. At the
end of a fortnight there was nothing Glyde would not have told him; at the
end of six months he would have crossed Europe barefoot to serve him.
He was nothing of a mystic, and therefore had his own ideas of what seemed
to afford his master so much satisfaction; he was enough of a poet to be
sure that Senhouse's romantic raptures were only a makeshift at best. To
his mind here was a man aching for a woman. He thought that the poet sang
to ease his bleeding heart.
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